Bigger Isn't Always Better

Have you ever wondered how a place like Sam’s club or Costco has so much food all the time? Or why is it that chicken breast and stakes so large? Its because the farming industry has drastically been altered in the United States over the last 25 years. Gone are the small farms, which have been kicked out by industrial factory operations, and animals and the natural world has become mere material in the process. Today, if the average size and quantity of food isn’t XL, than it isn’t meeting the antiquate norm.

Factory farms confine animals by the thousands in massive warehouses, treating them like production units rather than as living individuals. Millions are packed in cages and crates so tightly that they can’t walk, turn around or even stretch their limbs. It has not only become a moral issue but is now effecting our environment. Factory farming is one of the top contributors to our planet’s most significant environmental problems. The livestock industry, in  particular, is a greater contributor to global warming than the transportation industry. The livestock industry generates as much as 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, and 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, mostly from manure. The livestock instudy also consumes 8 percent of the global human water use, which is a large a number considering we only have a drop or so left.  It’s important to lessen our transportation footprint, but we could have an even larger impact by changing the foods we put on our plates.

Our food system is in desperate need of reform; people, animals and the Earth are suffering. Thankfully, we are beginning to pay attention. Many citizens are demanding more transparency around how foods, and especially animal products, are produced.  We are no longer comfortable accepting how agribusiness keeps animals who are raised for food hidden from us. When the food industry introduced legislation to ban the average person from documenting abuses on factory farms, their proposals have triggered widespread popular revulsion and have been defeated.  We are waking up to the cruelty inflicted on animals and demanding better for them, and for ourselves. If we do not open our eyes to Agriculture industries new found of growing and killing animals faster and on a larger scale than ever before, and the results of this so called cheap food system are severe for all of us. 

For a more in depth look watch http://youtu.be/L_vqIGTKuQE